Firefly
by Pickled Death
Summary: Sasuke x Sakura; a kunoichi makes a desperate wish to remain beside that whom she has sworn to protect. …Fast forward to Shiritsu Kadouzeki High School. The year is 2009. Popular know-it-all Haruno Sakura has met her antithesis.


**Title**: Firefly  
**Author**: Pickled Death  
**Genre**: General/Drama  
**Rating**: PG-13  
**Summary**: Sasuke x Sakura; a kunoichi makes a desperate wish to remain beside that whom she has sworn to protect. …Fast forward to Shiritsu Kadouzeki High School. The year is 2009. Popular know-it-all Haruno Sakura has met her antithesis. NaruHinaShikaInoNejiTen

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**prologue**

There were fireflies, you know. Fireflies, cradling the gravesite one barren winter night, eerie flickers of greenish-yellow illuminating the headstone runes carved with loving elaborateness; the fertile soil gave a twitch, and nothing more. A sliver of yellow-white moon was obscured by swirling torrents of dark rain clouds—and soon the swarm of fireflies, the light flitting from side to side, the miniscule lantern homage to the dead, would disperse come daybreak, but for now—

For now, however, she nursed the bruise on her forearm, marring her paper-white skin, and her sleepless nights were reflected in her face: the tired sag of her eyelids, the falter in usually prim posture.

The discolored skin turned white again at a whim, and she smiled as a light in her eyes dimmed.

_Good night_, she added, silently, always silently.

She stood.

_You're not dead_, she added, silently, stubbornly, always silently, as she turned to leave. But she _knew_, and she was standing, casting her eyes skyward, counting the stars that formed a constellation she couldn't have been bothered to string together or name; slowly, she slipped into her jounin vest, feeling the rustle of textured olive-green fabric against the slick black of her turtleneck (the tight sleeves falling just short of her elbows, unlike Tenten's self-tailored, flowing sleeves that probably concealed more than her hands).

_I don't miss you._

And she didn't.

There was _everything_: the nagging urge to reconcile, to forgive, to be forgiven, the grief the despair the too-real pain—but the longing, the _longing_ was dead, and she was whole again and _alive_ and try as she might, she found she could not be ungrateful.

So she turned back to the headstone, glowered spitefully at the runes, and told them she was dying.

"I'm dying," she said, quietly, chakra flickering like spouts of blaze at her manicured fingernails, and sea green eyes flickering with something the tombstone had no answer to. She was coral. Her hair was coral and her eyes were the sea, and she was fragile and breakable in the idle, incorporeal hands of a phantom of a boy ghosting through her thoughts. She was coral. The tombstone had no answer. "I'm dying. I-I overdid it, last mission." Shallow breaths, barely-concealed disbelief beneath a serene tone. "But—Tsunade-sama said it…that I've always been overexerting myself…my cells," she added quickly. "They're…depleting themselves now, like—like Chouji-san when he used his pills, you know?"

Of course he'd know. He'd _have_ to. He'd have to be the slightest bit curious about the fate, the welfare of the rescue team that didn't even like him but nearly died for him anyway. But—but that was _years_ ago; he'd forgotten by now, wherever he was (_certainly_ not in any form of afterlife), abandoned memories of his birthplace in favor of honing his birthright. He'd forgotten. Of course he would. She couldn't expect anything more from Uchiha Sasuke—

—or anything less. She knew, and she scowled for a half-second as a firefly passed, illuminating the hollowness of her eyes, the sallow skin that clung desperately to her cheekbones giving her the look of someone who'd aged forty years in a day, muscles once gently defined looked sinewy against her bony frame—yes, if he'd seen her, he would've known she was dying without having to ask.

She loved the smell of the wind just before rain, and as the fireflies dispersed as though through a unanimous decision, the clouds parted if slightly and the scent permeated the air—and she crossed her arms, a finger tapping her sluggish heartbeat and her other hand clutching her elbow; feeling heavy, almost unable to support her own weight, she bowed, her hair (grazing her shoulders) drooping over the hollow of her neck, wreathing her face in a pink that looked out of place beside the dreary gravesite.

Her lips moved. Soundlessly, but they moved.

Then she collapsed, fatigued (and dyingdying_dying_), and some dozens of handfuls of kilometers away—

—a phantom of a man could've sworn he'd seen a star fall, crumble from its point in the sky.

And then he opened his eyes.

·

·

·

·

"Who would forsake their salvation for _you_?"

His eyes, once downcast, raised of their own accord, glittering onyx, and standing before the council he boldly proclaimed and his voice rattled the walls: "Where. Is. Haruno. Sakura!?" And he did his best to retain his memories, struggling to find a familiar face amongst the hordes of grim faces, and he _remembered_, sketching vague details and stringing them together in his mind's eye—but his mind was numb and his heart was low and cold. He'd asked this question before, four times at the least, but _no one was listening_—

He'd found one, though. There was a man in the Hokage headpiece, so solemn now as he looked upon his former teammate, and Sasuke couldn't bear to spare those eyes a second glance. His pride wouldn't allow it, wouldn't allow everything and anything to come tumbling out of his traitorous mouth. Naruto did have a way with words, blunt and stabbing like a kunai to the heart, but still Sasuke refused to speak a word of the paths he'd treaded.

Unless _she_ asked him to.

"You really think she would, huh," Naruto said, quietly, and it echoed in the wake of the silence, rattling the same walls without ever raising his tone.

Sasuke didn't look at the Hokage outfit, either. Another burden on his eyes—or so he told himself, stripped weaponless and clad only in the most basic pair of trousers and the most basic shirt of ugly teal, fingers bound with the bones effectively fractured, and Sasuke didn't doubt they would gouge his eyes out sooner or later. "I didn't say that," he spat, though less loudly than his demand for her presence, and he averted his eyes again.

The Hokage's eyes were hooded suddenly, face fractured by the shadows suspended from his headpiece, a flash of blue and a flash of crystal or three, slipping quietly from what little of his face could be discerned and onto the wood; his tone was dead and too carefully controlled, and Sasuke had a brief flash of bewilderment until the words registered.

"She's dead. Her healing jutsus depleted her lifespan, and then her cell count."

Sasuke looked up, the words a threadbare whisper that rattled not the walls, but his _soul_, that which eluded him for so long and returned to him now, here, and he shivered and his vision blurred, half-formed denials loosening his tongue, and he crumbled but not physically. _Oh_—and then he stopped thinking, then, only numbly recalling how long it'd been since he'd allowed himself to even think her name before today, and only today did he recall the pleasant weight on his lead-heavy almost-corpse, the way she'd extracted the (_Haku's_) needles from his throat with tender care, the warmth of her tears and the warmth of her soul—

Minutes later, Naruto killed the silence, business again, and recited his punishment.

Numbly, he accepted it.

And then, in silence, he was dragged off to die.


End file.
